Santorum and his wife, Karen, will be spending the day at the hospital with their daughter, Bella. He did not have public events planned, but all internal “campaign activities,” the source says, from phone calls to fundraising, will be put on hold. Bella was hospitalized on Friday.

If you doubt this has anything to do with the campaign, note that last year, Obama didn’t even bother to devote an address to Easter. And in 2010, Obama offered “holiday greetings” as opposed to this year’s “Easter and Passover greetings,” and he barely got into any specifics about Christianity.

Many commentators have expressed outrage over the president criticizing Paul Ryan and demagoguing the Supreme Court. Personally, I can't muster outrage. I think it's just a sorry spectacle.

Somewhere along the line, Obama decided that his best path to reelection was through bare-knuckled partisan brawling. Undoubtedly, he flirted with the alternative of working with the opposition, for instance, by making William Daley chief of staff last year. But Daley is gone now, as is any pretense of collaboration.

...The country needs a bad guy to blame for its problems, so day in and day out Obama is providing them with a smorgasbord of villains from which to choose: Wall Street, Big Oil, the Tea Party, Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, the Supreme Court, the Catholic Church, and so on. In fact, virtually everything that comes out of this president’s mouth is about redirecting blame onto some straw man.

...This is why Obama does not care if his attacks are unfair, untrue, unoriginal, unseemly, or whatever. He has only one goal: The state of the union stinks right now, and I must keep that stench off me.

So were you outraged by Obama’s smarmy remarks about the Supreme Court? Too bad, he does not care. He is not after your vote. He is after the vote of the fellow in the middle of the electorate, who may never have even heard of Marbury v. Madison, but certainly knows about $4 gas. If Obama can get that guy to direct his anger at somebody else for the next seven months, then he wins reelection. This week the fall guy was the Supreme Court. Next week it will be John Boehner or Big Oil or whomever. Really, it does not matter so long as it is not the president.

A singularly remarkable event has taken place in the United States of America. This event occurred in Arizona on March 1st and was an earth shattering revelation.

A long awaited press conference was given by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a five time elected Sheriff, which should have made national and international headlines. Arpaio's credentials include serving in the United States Army from 1950 to 1953, service as a federal narcotics agent serving in countries all over the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and served as the head of the Arizona DEA. Without doubt, this is a serious Law Enforcement Officer, not one to be taken in by tin-foil-hat wearing loons.

Yet, in the five days since his revelations there has been little in the way of serious reporting on the findings he presented in his presser. With 6 short videos, the Sheriff and his team presented a devastating case, one the tame US press is apparently unable to report.

The exposure of the "Journolist" email scandal in 2010 made this glaringly clear: Stories like Obama's ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. of the Trinity United Church, and more relevant, to Bill Ayers and his radical past in the Weather Underground Organization were to remain largely un-reported and uninvestigated. Any realistic investigation into Barack Obama's background was to be minimized, inquiries eventually mocked, and investigators labeled racists.

These tactics have isolated honest media who could and should have reported on these and other important stories yet have inexplicably remained silent. Now we know why.

oday there is no American news outlet factually covering the illegal actions of the sitting President of the United States in context. Nor is there one consistently exposing the laws his administration has flagrantly broken, though this corruption now demonstrably permeates every level of the federal system.

By now it is unsurprising the media has by and large ignored this announcement though AG Cuccinelli did appear in an extended segment with CSPAN (the relevant segment can be found here) on March 18th.

Fortunately, The Tea Party Tribune published the Attorney's General memo, "A Report on Obama Administration Violations of Law" in full the same day it was released. It is nothing short of a flashing legal headline story, yet cannot be found at the Washington Post or the New York Times.

I could give you endless examples of small businesses crushed by big government. Here are two:

Shelly Goodman paid millions to buy a 13,000-square-foot mansion on 10 acres in Arizona in order to create a wedding reception center and bed-and-breakfast. Local bureaucrats forced her to spend thousands of dollars on studies to show that her business would not create burdensome traffic or noise. She did. The studies said it wouldn't. Yet the big house sits empty because her local government refuses to let her operate a business, even on her own property.

In Virginia, Greg Garrett started farming oysters. His neighborhood is zoned for livestock. He could raise buffalo, but local bureaucrats decreed that he could not sell oysters. Why not? My staff talked to the zoning official, and we still have no clue. That's the case with a lot of American law. It's arbitrary power. Regulations are so numerous and complex that no one really understands them. This diminishes our ability to flourish.

Brown and his allies are now trying to collect more than 800,000 valid voter signatures required to qualify for the November ballot. Time is short, and the use of mail is an indication of how expensive paid signature gathering by clipboard has become for the initiative campaign - at a cost of perhaps $3 per signature on the street.

Smart Girl Politics co-founder Teri Christoph says it like this: “Women are tired of the political manipulation of this White House. We know when we are being pandered and played to, and we will no longer allow this discussion to focus on the concerns of a small segment of the women in this country. Women are far more concerned with the lack of action from this Administration and a do-nothing Congress when it comes to jobs, rising energy prices, and our national security.”

SGP yesterday released a video to tell the White House: You don’t speak for us. Refreshing to know I’m not the only one who feels that way. Who speaks for me? I do.

Cherie and Rob Arkley, philanthropists and civic activists will be honored as the Republicans of the Year at the party’s annual dinner, Saturday, April 14 at the Ingomar Club.

Long active in civic affairs, they created the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts by completely rebuilding an old stage-and-screen theater; contributed $2 million to the City of Eureka for the waterfront boardwalk and were major funders of the Sequoia Zoo expansion. As business leaders they founded Economic Fuel, an annual competition among college students and recent graduates for the best entrepreneurial business plan. Winners receive cash prizes with which to start their businesses.

Cherie Arkley served on the Eureka City Council from 1998-2002. She is active in North Coast Dance, The Arkley Center, Miranda’s Rescue, the Humboldt Arts Council and the HSU President’s Advisory Board. Rob Arkley has served on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation and Access Humboldt.

The Republicans will also honor Rose Welsh, McKinleyville, as Volunteer of the Year. Welsh, whose professional background is in advertising and design, has created the party’s web site and its graphic materials.

Keynote speaker at the dinner was to have been Andrew Breitbart, web site entrepreneur, who died of a heart attack at age 43 on March 1. His friend Ann Corkery, of Washington, D.C., had asked him to be the speaker. She will speak in his place, reviewing his work and also sharing insights from her years in the practice of law, with the State Department and a United Nations commission. She is currently the Washingtion representative of Eureka-based Security National Servicing Corporation.

Mitt Romney has decided the best defense is a good offense. Derided as a "flip-flopper" by President Obama? Throw the charge back in the president's face. Attacked for his plan to revamp Medicare? Fire back that Obama has already crippled the popular entitlement program.

That was the central theme of the all-but-inevitable Republican presidential nominee's speech Wednesday to the Newspaper Association of America: Try to take evident vulnerabilities of his own candidacy and turn them against the current White House occupant. As Romney pivots toward the general election - and after Tuesday's victories, this week seems to mark a line of demarcation between the primary and general elections - it hints at a major part of his strategy to unseat Obama.

Romney has been knocked repeatedly - by Republican and Democratic critics alike - for changing position on issues like abortion-rights and gay marriage. But during his speech, he listed a series of Obama's own flip-flops he deemed "election-year conversions." The list included corporate tax rates, regulation, and energy policy.

"Nancy Pelosi famous said that we would have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it," Romney said. "President Obama has turned that advice into a campaign strategy: He wants us to re-elect him to find out what he will actually do.

"With all the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for President Obama's hide-and-seek campaign," he added

The conversation focused on the struggling candidacy of former House speaker Newt Gingrich and whether a final push could be made to unite conservatives and stop the likely nomination of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The idea of Santorum leaving the race was not raised.
“It was a discussion of how to win, not a discussion of anything other than that,” said Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative leader who was at the meeting.

Despite this optimism, there are signs that the wear and tear of the campaign trail and the daunting odds against his winning the nomination are weighing on Santorum.

“He is exhausted,” said one influential Republican who has talked to Santorum in recent days. “He is very, very worried about losing Pennsylvania. He is trying to find a way to throw a very long pass that could change the game.”

◼ The Extreme Poverty Rate – Income Below Half Of Federal Poverty Line – Is The Highest Ever Recorded Among Women. “The ‘extreme poverty rate’ among women was the highest ever recorded, climbing to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009. ‘Extreme poverty’ means that your income is below half of the federal poverty line—and by 2010, more than 7.5 million women had fallen into that dire category.” - (Leslie Bennetts, “Women: The Invisible Poor,” - The Daily Beast, 9/14/11)

◼ In 2010, 17 Million Women Lived In Poverty, Compared To 12.6 Million Men. “What all those statistics add up to is that more than 17 million women were living in poverty last year, compared with 12.6 million men. As usual, things were worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 were living in poverty, compared with men.” (Leslie Bennetts, “Women: The Invisible Poor,” - The Daily Beast, 9/14/11)

◼ The Poverty Rate Is 25.6 Percent For Black Women And 25 Percent For Hispanic Women. “And those numbers just represented the population-wide average. For Hispanic and black women, the poverty rate increased even faster and rose higher—to 25 percent for Hispanic women and to 25.6 percent for black women.” (Leslie Bennetts, “Women: The Invisible Poor,” - The Daily Beast, 9/14/11)

◼ More Than 40 Percent Of Single Mothers Live In Poverty. “As usual, single mothers are having the hardest time of all. More than 40 percent of women who head families are now living in poverty. With more than half of poor children living in female-headed families in 2010, the child poverty rate jumped to 22 percent.” (Leslie Bennetts, “Women: The Invisible Poor,” - The Daily Beast, 9/14/11)

The Failure Of Obamanomics Could “Put A Dent” In Female Support For Obama

◼ Democrats’ Advantage Among Women Is Narrowing. “While Democrats have charged that the Republican position amounts to a ‘war on women,’ the poll indicates that they aren’t benefiting from it in respondents’ perceptions of the two parties. The survey also suggests that the advantage Democrats have historically enjoyed among women may have narrowed.” (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Republicans Losing On Birth Control As 77% In Poll Spurn Debate,” - Bloomberg, 3/14/12)

◼ This Is “Despite A Significant Outreach Effort To Female Voters.” “Despite a significant outreach effort to female voters and Democratic accusations of a GOP 'war on women,' a new Bloomberg poll shows Obama losing ground among women from his 2008 vote share.” (Byron Tau, “Poll: Obama Down Among Female Voters From 2008 Results,” - Politico’s “44,” 3/14/12)

◼ 49 Percent Of Women Would Support Obama In The Election, Down From 56 Percent In 2008. “Forty-nine percent of women say they would choose Obama over Romney, the front-runner in delegates in the Republican primary, compared with 45 percent who say they’d pick the former Massachusetts governor. In 2008, Obama won 56 percent of the women’s vote to 43 percent for the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, according to national exit polls.” (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Republicans Losing On Birth Control As 77% In Poll Spurn Debate,” - Bloomberg, 3/14/12)

Thursday, April 5, 2012

I don’t think that President Obama believes a word of his remarks about what the Supreme Court can or cannot do about any given piece of legislation. Attorney General Holder said as much today when he agreed that the Supremes are there specifically to protect against laws they consider unconstitutional. Holder’s not picking a fight with his boss.

It’s not about that. It’s about power. And freedom.

Power, because the president and his people think that, since they are smarter and better than the rest of us, anyone who tries to limit their power is bad, and has to be brought into line. Thus, the tough words of warning to any justice contemplating voting against Obamacare.

Freedom, because the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive branch comes at our expense, bit by bit and law by law, precisely as Alexis de Tocqueville feared....

Lambert, who writes for the "Truth on the Market" blog, not only studied under Obama, but also clerked for the federal judge who issued an order yesterday demanding that the Department of Justice clarify whether the government believed courts had the power to overturn constitutional laws.

...President Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago. Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers — the old “structural Constitution” stuff — is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student). Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment. (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.) Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks....

BREAKING NEWS: The Justice Department is still of the opinion, after 200-plus years, that federal judges may strike down unconstitutional laws.

As promised, Attorney General Eric Holder today filed a 3-page, single-spaced letter with the Fifth Circuit outlining the department’s views on the concept of judicial review. Actually, the letter is two and a half pages, but let’s hope Judge Jerry Smith rounds up.

During arguments in a health-care case on Tuesday, Judge Smith demanded the Justice Department produce the letter, in light of President Barack Obama’s commenting that the Supreme Court would be taking an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if it struck down the Affordable Care Act.

“Seems to me, [Obama is] having a hard time hiding his anger. And the angrier he gets, the more he struggles. Any creature trapped in a net knows that flailing about only further ensnares. No-Drama Obama needs to chill; if he can’t relax, he’s toast.”

Is the United States leaking information in order to discourage an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities? That’s what some experts are saying in the wake of ◼ a controversial piece published last week in Foreign Policy magazine, which reported that Israel may be intending to use Azerbaijan as a base of operations in the event of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities....

There are plenty of American experts who see it the same way. “The leak is entirely consistent with what we know about Obama’s view on the Iranian nuclear weapons program,” John Bolton, former ambassador the United Nations, told me in a phone interview. Bolton argues that the White House has purposefully stripped Israel of its tactical surprise. “First [Defense Secretary] Panetta gave a likely date for a prospective attack, April or May, and now unnamed sources leak a likely place where the attacks might be launched from.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition expressed its disapproval of the alleged White House leak. “It is clear from recent press reports that the Obama Administration has moved from quiet diplomacy to lightly veiled attacks in the media to prevent the Israelis from taking action against Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities,” said executive director Matt Brooks.

But the administration denies that it is leaking, and a senior administration official even said the White House would gladly prosecute the source of the leaks—if it knew who was doing it.

If there's a Laffer Curve for Presidential invective—some point at which dishonest political abuse yields diminishing returns—the White House political team must not think their boss has hit it. Even in this hyperpartisan age, President Obama's speech to the Associated Press yesterday was a parody of the form. This was a diatribe that managed to invoke "Social Darwinism" and "a Trojan Horse" in the same paragraph, amid the other high crimes that Mr. Obama says Paul Ryan wants to commit....

The list of untrue things that Mr. Obama wants Americans to believe is evidently so long that Mr. Obama associated himself with Republicans, albeit mostly dead Republicans like Lincoln and Eisenhower. For the first time we can recall, Mr. Obama even praised George W. Bush, of all people, because his predecessor created a new entitlement for prescription drugs. He also said Newt Gingrich showed how smart he was when he called Mr. Ryan's budget "radical" and "right-wing social engineering" last year.

All of this is a political fable carefully constructed to erase the record of the last three years and blame every current anxiety on a GOP House that has been in office for all of 14 months. The President claims to have "eliminated dozens of programs that weren't working," but the savings from these eliminations amount to less than 0.1% of the budget, or less than $100 million.

Meanwhile, the budget has grown by more than 20% since he has been President. After deficits of $1.412 trillion, $1.293 trillion, and $1.299 trillion over the last three years, and an estimated $1.326 trillion due for 2012, he still claims the deficits are all Mr. Bush's fault—except for the extra spending on Medicare, which he likes.

It is especially rich of Mr. Obama to accuse Republicans of breaking last summer's debt-limit deal—given that even the most sympathetic press accounts that are now emerging make it clear that the President blew up his "big deal" with John Boehner. The House Speaker was prepared to trade higher taxes for mostly notional changes to entitlements, but Mr. Obama thought he could roll him at the last minute for even greater tax increases.

Now he claims Mr. Ryan's reforms are "antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility." But it is more accurate to say that Mr. Obama is the one who is out of step with a bipartisan consensus that entitlement reform is essential to prevent a debt crisis.

"What he did was make an unremarkable observation about 80 years of Supreme Court history," Carney told reporters during a White House briefing dominated by the topic....

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who backs Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination to confront Obama, told Fox News the president was "bullying the Supreme Court," and the White House was grilled on whether he had gone too far.

During robust questioning when Carney was told at one point that he had mischaracterized what the president had said, the press secretary was forced to repeatedly defend the remarks of his boss as an observation of fact.

“A majority passed [the health care law], Ed,” said visibly-frustrated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Fox News’ Ed Henry was grilling Carney after the press secretary said “no,” the Ryan budget — which passed the House with nine more votes than Obamacare received — did not have “a strong majority” of support.
The Ryan budget passed this year by a 228-191 margin. Obamacare passed the House by a 219-212 margin.

...And what has the money been spent on? Some of it presumably goes to professors in the hard sciences and the great scholars who have made American universities the best in the world. Well and good.

But many university administrators have other priorities. The University of California system has been raising tuitions and cutting departments. But, reports John Leo in the invaluable Minding the Campus blog, its San Diego campus found the money to create a new post of "vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion...." Read the rest.

Romney's wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia put him past the halfway mark to the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination and add to a wide delegate lead that he holds over the other major GOP presidential candidates, according to CNN estimates.

The former Massachusetts governor won at least 83 delegates in the three contests, with six delegates yet to be decided. Romney got all 37 delegates in Maryland and all 16 delegates in the District of Columbia. He won at least 30 delegates in Wisconsin.
Romney's chief rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, won at least six delegates in Wisconsin, with six left to be decided.

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s bigger plan to blow off Congress by using its executive powers to grant illegal immigrants backdoor amnesty. The plan has been in the works for years and in 2010 Texas’s largest newspaper published an exposé about a then-secret DHS initiative that systematically cancelled pending deportations. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who said the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.

In late 2011 a mainstream newspaper obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. This also includes a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents and prosecuting attorneys don’t remove illegal immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes.

That talent was displayed just this week when he was asked whether he thought the Supreme Court would uphold ObamaCare as constitutional or strike it down as unconstitutional.

He replied: "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

But how unprecedented would it actually be if the Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional if it was passed by "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress"?

The Supreme Court has been doing precisely that for 209 years!

Nor is it likely that Barack Obama has never heard of it. He has a degree from the Harvard law school and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. In what must be one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history -- Marbury v. Madison in 1803 -- Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle that the Supreme Court can declare acts of Congress null and void if these acts violate the Constitution.

I render that assessment as someone who has sat through and analyzed countless Obama lectures, some of which earned very high marks for deceit and ideological invective. Indeed, today's Occupy-inspired rant takes the cake. It was a depressing and enraging preview of the next seven months, over which this president will unleash a barrage of sophistic and pernicious arguments deliberately designed to sow discord and divide Americans. He will do so with no regard for the truth, history, or the Constitution he swore to uphold. I genuinely cannot see how anyone who considers him- or herself a "conservative" in any meaningful sense could watch this screed and not immediately redouble his resolve to help defeat the man who delivered it. Adequately addressing and debunking this speech is going to be a Herculean undertaking. Nearly every single paragraph is littered with distortions, scorched straw men, and flat untruths. But I'm going to take a stab at it. Today's MUST READ at the link

...Business owners also say that some job applicants want to get paid under the table, so they can continue to collect jobless benefits. A recent story by CNN Money highlighted a manufacturing firm in Wisconsin that has started to lock out job applicants it suspects of showing up just so they can say they looked for work—a requirement for anybody receiving jobless benefits. Another business owner, in Illinois, said in the same story that her company needs to hire 45 to 50 new salespeople, but struggles with workers who quit after getting free training, or who try to get fired after a few months of work so they can re-qualify for unemployment insurance. The company has now hired a specialist to help weed out phonies and identify worthwhile applicants....

According to the WSJ, Romney’s also beating Santorum 51/38 among voters who decided in just the last few days. A quote to ponder from a Wisconsin voter while we wait for more: “I very much hope that he gets the nomination and we get this thing settled soon. These guys are kind of tearing each other apart in the process. I think it’s a circular firing squad at this point.”

I get that politics isn’t supposed to be fair, but it would be classier if Rick Santorum laid off on the highly-charged negative TV ads since it’s absolutely clear to everyone on the planet, except him and maybe his wife that he is not going to be the nominee and that he should help, rather than hurt, the very hard work that Mitt and Ann Romney have ahead of them as they face the monster Obama machine.

There was something rather unsettling in President Obama’s preemptive strike on the Supreme Court at Monday’s news conference.... Obama’s assault on “an unelected group of people” stopped me cold. Because, as the former constitutional law professor certainly understands, it is the essence of our governmental system to vest in the court the ultimate power to decide the meaning of the constitution. Even if, as the president said, it means overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”

In the escalating battle between the administration and the judiciary, a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president’s bluff — ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.

A source inside the courtroom, speaking to Fox News afterward, described the questioning by Smith as pointed. Smith also made clear during that exchange that he was "referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect ... that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed unelected judges to strike acts of Congress. ... That has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority," Smith said. "And that's not a small matter."

Smith ordered a response from the department within 48 hours. The related letter from the court, obtained by Fox News, instructed the Justice Department to provide an explanation of "no less than three pages, single spaced" by noon on Thursday.

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan swung back at President Barack Obama Tuesday after the president ripped the House Republican budget as a “Trojan horse” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
In a statement, Ryan – who’s become a top voice for the Republican Party on fiscal matters – accused Obama of putting forth a “failed agenda” that does nothing to ease the nation’s mounting $15 trillion debt.

“History will not be kind to a president who, when it came time to confront our generation’s defining challenge, chose to duck and run,” Ryan said. “The president refuses to take responsibility for the economy and refuses to offer a credible plan to address the most predictable economic crisis in our history.

Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Department of Energy -- "the largest amount ever offered to a solar project," according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded....

Uwe Schmidt, chairman and CEO of the company, also argued that Solar Trust was good for the nation. He wrote last year that "the DOE loan guarantee is a 'win-win' for government and the companies involved and will not only advance the cause of energy independence but will create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country."

The bankruptcy makes Schmidt's attempt to rebuke DOE critics in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy particuarly ironic.

"Despite the posturing and finger pointing, the American solar energy industry is alive and well," Schmidt wrote in an op-ed for the Huffington Post, before discussing his company's business plans. Referring to Solyndra, he lamented that "one company's bankruptcy has cast doubt on the credibility of a government program that is otherwise being administered with incredible efficiency."

The list of bankrupt solar companies has grown since Schmidt scolded Solyndra investigators. How many more might go bankrupt? Secretary Chu won't say.

Romney's chief rival, Rick Santorum, skipped Maryland and the District to barnstorm Wisconsin over the past week. While state political experts expect Santorum to do well enough to pick up some of Wisconsin's 42 delegates, they say he's unlikely to win.

Romney is leading Santorum 43 percent to 36 percent in Wisconsin, the largest prize of the day, a Public Policy poll released Monday showed. The poll found the former Massachusetts governor ahead even among the Tea Party supporters whose backing has until now helped keep Santorum's conservative quest alive.

Gingrich still has supporters who want him to go all the way. "Things can turn on a dime," says Karen Winterling, Gingrich's Maryland coordinator, who believes Romney might still blow himself up with a gaffe or major campaign mistake. "Something could happen and Newt could go right to the top."

"Look, I don't have the hubris to say, I came in third in collecting delegates, so I'm now going to dictate the platform," Gingrich says at lunch. "What I am going to say is that this represents my honest thoughts ... about what America needs."

"You may ultimately lose the battle of candidacy, but that doesn't mean you lose the battle of ideas."

On one side are Democracy Alliance members who believe in the original mission of the donors’ collaborative. Created after Democrats failed to reclaim power in the 2004 election, the group started out funding left-wing political infrastructure – think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools, and media outlets— to help the Left gain and keep power. The idea was to focus on long-term organizational issues as opposed to helping Democrats get elected every election cycle.

...On the other side of the divide are those Democracy Alliance members who want the group to more closely align itself with groups close to the Obama White House such as Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress in order to help Democrats in the approaching election.

Right now this faction appears to have the upper hand. The Democracy Alliance has officially dumped several of the more ideologically oriented groups as recommended grantees. Among the dropped groups are Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), documentary filmmaker Brave New Foundation, and the Campaign for America’s Future which has repeatedly attacked Democrats for taking insufficiently left-wing stances.

Trust fund baby Rob McKay, the Taco Bell heir who chairs the Democracy Alliance’s board, is going all out to make sure President Obama wins a second term. McKay, who also sits on the board of the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action super PAC, helped organize a $35,800-a-plate fundraiser for Obama earlier this year....

The Democracy Alliance has also funded People for the American Way, EMILY’s List, ACORN, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Progressive States Network, Center for Community Change, Sierra Club, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, and the Secretary of State Project which has helped elect left-wingers as chief electoral officials in at least nine states.
SEIU and the AFL-CIO are institutional members of the Democracy Alliance.

"Well, you know, I would put up my record as a CEO of a city, of a state, as an oil and gas regulator, up against any of the other potential GOP vice presidential nominees last go-around. So you know, I’m proud to stand on my record as a private sector and a public servant CEO. I would say it doesn’t matter if that person has national level experience or not, they’re going to get clobbered by the “lamestream” media who does not like conservative message. And it doesn’t matter if that person has been a known commodity to the mainstream, lamestream media or not, the GOP ticket, to tell you the truth Matt, doesn’t know what’s coming. They don’t know what’s going to hit them in terms of double standards applied to them and the positions that they hold and the records that they are running on, from personal family issues to anything else."

First off, Palin never said she can see Russia from her house. Nope, she never did. It was Tina Fey in an SNL (Saturday Night Live) Skit, which in all fairness at the time was actually funny. It is only after people began to blur the lines between what Fey said and Palin actually said that things have gotten out of control.

However even those who know that Palin never said she can see Russia from her house are pushing the narrative that she used Alaska’s proximity to Russia as her foreign policy credentials. This too is false.

To get a better understanding of the source of this narrative we need to go back to the Governor’s first national televised interview with Charlie Gibson. The complete transcript of the relevant part (at the link)...

CHP deployed an additional 288 sworn personnel to the Capitol for the demonstration, bringing the total number of officers on scene to 367, the department said in response to a Bee inquiry. That presence included roughly 100 officers outfitted in riot gear stationed outside the building as the mostly peaceful protest continued into the evening.

Thousands of students, teachers and activists descended on the Capitol for the March 5 day of action, which was organized by Student Senate for California Community Colleges, California State Student Association and the University of California Student Association. Speakers at the rally blasted budget cuts to higher education and called for more funding for the state's public colleges and universities.

Jarrett attended the Supreme Court last week as it heard arguments on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Her presence as the president’s “eyes and ears” was noted by Breitbart.com’s Ken Klukowski. Jarrett had also led the administration’s media charge in advance of the Supreme Court arguments, arguing that Obamacare is necessary because it protects women’s health in particular, shaping the case to fit Democrats' narrative of a Republican "war on women."

As more moderate, pragmatic voices have abandoned the White House to attend to the actual business of governing--Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel being only one of many defectors--Jarrett has remained and her influence has grown.

Jarrett endorses the idea that Obama is still a “community organizer” in the White House, and the administration’s Alinksyite tactics of race and class division bear her fingerprints as much as his own.

Former president Bill Clinton said today on MSNBC that Obamacare shouldn’t be struck down by the Supreme Court – he actually said it wasn’t unconstitutional in any “way, shape or form” -- and instead suggested that the only reason it would be struck down is pure politics.

Black men named Trayvon get killed all of the time in America, so why does the left fail to express consistent outrage? Is there something different about the slaying of Trayvon Martin's death, or is the real problem that the left tolerates extraordinary violence against black men in America?

“She’s terribly important in that she is actually Mitt’s connection to the base,” said GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, who worked on Romney’s 2008 presidential effort. “His link to the base doesn’t come from ideology. It comes from family values channeled through Ann. She’s the authentic core of Romney’s conservative principles.”

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group....

While women typically are more likely to identify themselves as Democrats than men are, that difference widens to a chasm in the USA TODAY poll. By 41%-24%, women call themselves Democrats; men by 27%-25% say they're Republicans.

The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama's re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she's accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state — a charge her husband denies.

...Assongba has left a trail of debts, with a former landlord demanding in court more than $10,000 in back rent and damages for a previous apartment. She was also evicted in 2004 after owing $5,000 in rent, records show.

...Assongba has given more than $70,000 to Democratic candidates in recent years, an AP review of Federal Election Commission data shows. Her larger contributions include $35,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee between Obama and the Democratic Party, and $15,000 to Democrats running for Congress. DeRosa also gave $15,000 to Obama's victory fund in April 2011, records show.

Katie Couric will be filling in for Robin Roberts next week on ABC's "Good Morning America..."

NBC's decision to seat the former Alaska Governor-turned-multimedia star in their anchor chair should prove to be a fruitful one. Since coming onto the national scene in 2008, Palin has become one of the most charismatic figures in conservative America and will likely bring "Today" an entirely different demographic of viewers.

"I see this as a good opportunity to bring an independent, common-sense conservative perspective to NBC. We’re 'going rogue' and infiltrating some turf for a day,” Palin told Breitbart News.

In a video produced by the MacIver Institute, organizers are seen arriving at a March 17 training session with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, Wisconsin's state teachers union.

Teachers' unions led last year's protests in Wisconsin against collective bargaining reforms, and are now heavily involved in the effort to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. In addition to Alinskyite groups, the recall effort has attracted the support of radicals such as unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

In a little-known speech to Wisconsin teachers last September, Ayers spoke of the need for "a new kind of education for a new kind of citizens that can make a new kind of society”

"What percentage of the American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and that child was turned away because the parent didn't have insurance," asked Sotomayor, "... do you think there's a large percentage of the American population that would stand for the death of that child -- (who) had an allergic reaction and a simple shot would have saved the child?"
I have a precise answer for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The percentage of American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and were turned away because the parent didn't have insurance is exactly zero.

No person, whether American or not, is ever turned away from an emergency room for lack of health insurance. Ever.

“[The] Occupy movement pretty much saved the entire country from destruction,” Jones said in an interview posted online. “Both political parties were barreling toward more austerity, more cutbacks, more pain for the people and more — basically both political parties had managed to converge on this idea of basically no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, no middle class to speak of. That was basically the agenda, the question was just how much pain how fast.”

“Occupy Wall Street came on and completely disrupted the narrative,” he said. All the ‘austerity, austerity, cut, cut, cut’ stuff went away and suddenly even Republicans had to talk about income inequality and that whole theme. Occupy Wall Street really kind of, like, helped us to hit a reset in the country.”

...Jones said next week will kick off a massive training effort, in the style of the 1960s, to teach protesters nonviolent civil disobedience. In what’s being called “The 99% Spring,” Jones’ organization, Rebuild the American Dream, is partnering with the SEIU, MoveOn.org, the Domestic Workers Alliance and others to train 100,000 people across the country in direct action.

The Keystone speech did not go over well. Referring to the president's support for only part of the XL pipeline, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., said he was "highlighting a waffle," keeping the issue alive while pleasing no one. "I think it's the most idiotic political move I've ever seen."

...Mr. Obama lies most often about energy, but not only about energy.

Obamacare will cost taxpayers a lot more than he said it would. It raises, not lowers, health insurance premiums. You might not be able to keep your doctor or private health insurance plan. The individual mandate isn't a tax, Mr. Obama said. His lawyers told the Supreme Court that, in essence, it is.

The president was overheard Monday making a politically embarrassing request of Russia's president. In trying to explain it away, Mr. Obama claimed he'd been talking about nuclear weapons stockpiles when in fact he'd been talking about missile defense.

"The Taliban's momentum has been broken," the president said in the State of the Union address Jan. 24. The Taliban consider victory "inevitable" once coalition troops withdraw, according to interviews with Taliban prisoners cited in a NATO report.

Lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House," candidate Obama promised, then filled his administration with former lobbyists.

"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," he said. No recent president has done more to hide things from press and public, say critics such as Katherine Meyer, a lawyer who's been filing freedom-of-information cases since 1978, according to a report in Politico.

When Mr. Obama departed from the truth in the past, journalists were reluctant to call him on it. Now, as he races about the country, trying, frantically, to fool the people one more time, the lies are coming faster than his friends in the news media can cover them up.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.

Figure becomes ground; ground becomes figure. The stakes could not be higher....

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality, and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.

Last night, President Obama spoke at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. There, he attacked his political opponents’ philosophy:

They've got one message and that is, we're going to make sure that we cut people's taxes even more – so that by every objective measure our deficit is worse and we will slash government investments that have made this country great, not because it's going to balance the budget, but because it's driven by our ideological vision about how government should be. That's their agenda, pure and simple.

Obviously the takeaway line here is that “government investments … have made this country great.” That is insipid. The American people and their hard work, perseverance, and creativity make this country great, not bureaucrats in Washington spending huge sums of money in order to generate mediocre results. In another speech on Friday, Obama suggested that Republicans suffered from “madness” for opposing him.

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Hi, I'm John Schutt, chairman of the Humboldt County Republican Central Committee: Want to get involved? We need republicans for open spots on the central committee, committee seats, letters to the editor writers, and more. Send me your thoughts and ideas on making Humboldt great again. Please feel free to call the office (442-2259) or leave a message here (or on Facebook) and I will get back to you as soon as possible.